Maypole

Maypole were one of the great bands to explode on the scene in the late 60's. Originally from the Baltimore area, their 1970 LP "The Real" is revered by many collectors. This is the second album by Maypole, which consists of studio sessions recorded in Miami from 1973-1974 which have never been released before. 53 minutes of hard driving rock tastefully injected with some nice orchestration.

Maypole were a Baltimore band formed around 1969, and featured five vocalists, Dennis Tobell (lead guitar), Steve Mace (2nd guitar), Paul Welsh (drums), Kenny Ross (percussion) and John Nickel (bass). Dennis Tobell (who later used the name Demian Bell) was hit by a bus when he was four years old. Appropriately, the band he would go on to lead made music that can make you feel like you’ve been hit by a moving vehicle – a powerful engine that doesn’t inflict physical harm but leaves the ears ringing with loudly melodic music. The legend of Maypole is fraught with mafia connections, drug culture and the worst the music business had to offer, and the band had the misfortune of signing to a label that folded before it could do anything with its solid album. Originally released on Colossus in 1971, this self-titled effort was the only album to emerge during Maypole’s brief lifetime.

XTC almost never wrote a sentimental song– which is strange, when you consider how much of their music deals with nostalgia, home and country, and yearning. Their lyrics are bittersweet and escapist, but even in the lost summers of Skylarking, they cling to some element– biting words, knuckle-cracking hooks, or just a distractingly loud arrangement– that keeps their most heartstring-pulling, young-love-eulogizing songs from drifting away. Which is why their 1999 release Apple Venus Vol. 1 is so much more complicated and concrete than a first impression suggests. That album, plus its 2000 counterpart Wasp Star (Apple Venus Vol. 2), came out after a break of seven years. In that time, Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding, and Dave Gregory– who formally left the band before these albums were released– walked out on Virgin, stayed home making demos, and came back with this pair of records on TVT. And five years and no further material later, XTC have packaged them together in the Apple Box, along with lyrics, liner notes, and two demos-and-outtakes albums.

Their reputation growing by leaps and bounds, including a huge underground following in the U.S. – they were able to tour there even without one domestic release available, while at one point Dead Can Dance was the biggest selling band in 4AD's history – Perry and Gerrard once again did the business with Aion. Its cover taken from Bosch, Aion's medievalism was worn more openly than ever before, with songs adapted from centuries-old material. The beautiful, entrancing "Saltarello," with lead performance by what sounds like an old wind instrument, comes from an Italian dance of the 14th century, while the mysterious moods of "The Song of the Sibyl" derive from 16th-century Catalonia. The group's command of not merely recording possibilities – witness the exquisite layering of vocals on the opening "The Arrival and the Reunion" – but of musical traditions, instruments, and more from around the world was arguably never stronger. Gerrard's vocals in particular have an even stronger, richer feeling than before, not merely able to command with its power but softly calm and seduce.

Exquisite eldritch spooking from Children Of Alice, the trio of Broadcast’s James Cargill and Roj Stevens joined by Julian House, who collaborated with Broadcast on the final album in his guise as The Focus Group. The trio are titled in tribute to Trish Keenan (R.I.P.), the Broadcast co-founder and Cargill’s partner, who named Jonathan Miller’s ‘60s film adaptation of Alice In Wonderland among the band’s main inspirations.

The band that eventually became the Children began life as a pair of competing garage combos on the often-overlooked San Antonio rock circuit in 1965. The Stoics came together in the spring of that year. Guitarists William Ash and Rufus Quillian were upper-middle-class kids while singer Al Acosta, drummer Sam Allen, and bass player Michel Marechal all came from the city's predominantly Hispanic northeast side…